Ma Haide: The untold story of George Hatem

A man sits inside a family home in the mountain village of Hammana, unfolding a letter that has remained carefully preserved for more than four decades.

The paper has yellowed with age. The creases have softened after years of being folded and unfolded. Across the top of the page, two words locate its origin.

Beijing.

October 31, 1983.

At the bottom, the signature belongs to a man known by two names.

Dr. Ma Haide (George Hatem).

The letter contains none of the things one might expect from a figure celebrated as one of modern China's national heroes. There is no mention of Mao Zedong. No discussion of revolution. No politics.

Instead, he thanks his relatives for the olives they had sent from Lebanon. He asks about Hammana. He worries about the civil war consuming his ancestral homeland. He sends warm wishes to every member of the family.

Thousands of kilometers away, the physician revered across China as Ma Haide, the man who helped transform the country's fight against leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases, and the first foreigner to become a citizen of the People's Republic of China, was writing not as a revolutionary or a national hero, but as George, a relative who had never stopped thinking about home.

His story belongs equally to Lebanon and China," Joseph Rached, Georges Hatem's cousin, said in an exclusive interview with The Beiruter.

He built a bridge between two worlds long before diplomacy made that possible.

History has preserved Ma Haide's achievements in remarkable detail. His role in China's revolution, his pioneering medical campaigns and the honors that followed are well documented. The letters preserved by his family in Lebanon tell a different story. They reveal not simply what Georges Hatem accomplished, but who he remained.

Joseph Rached, cousin of Georges Hatem, looks through the family's private archive of photographs and documents during an exclusive interview with The Beiruter in Hammana, Lebanon.

Long before China knew him as Ma Haide, he was simply George Hatem

His story began not in Beijing or Shanghai, but in the mountain village of Hammana. Like thousands of Lebanese emigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, his father, Nahoum Salameh Hatem, left Mount Lebanon in search of opportunity in the United States.

Although raised in America, George spent summers in Hammana with relatives, forging a connection to Lebanon that distance would never erase.

After studying at the University of North Carolina, the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the University of Geneva, the newly graduated physician boarded a ship to Shanghai in 1933 with two fellow American doctors. The plan was simple: gain experience, practice medicine and eventually return to the United States.

He never did.

Family photograph of Dr. Ma Haide (George Hatem) with his wife, Mrs. Ma Haide Su Fei, 1987.

The road to Yan'an

The China George Hatem encountered in 1933 was a nation in turmoil. Foreign concessions divided its cities, civil war simmered, Japanese aggression was intensifying, and disease thrived where poverty denied millions even basic healthcare.

Fresh out of medical school, Hatem opened a dermatology and venereal disease practice in Shanghai with two fellow American physicians. The city's International Settlement offered a comfortable career serving expatriates and wealthy Chinese patients. But beyond its modern façade, he discovered a different China. Patients suffered from illnesses driven as much by poverty, overcrowding and exploitation as by disease itself, leading Hatem to question not only how to treat illness, but the conditions that created it.

During those years, he met people who would shape his future. Through American journalist Agnes Smedley, he was introduced to Soong Ching-ling, widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, and later Zhou Enlai, who would become the first premier of the People's Republic of China. Their conversations revealed a China far removed from Shanghai's foreign concessions.

Then came an opportunity few physicians would have accepted. The Communist forces, newly established in Yan'an after the Long March, desperately needed a doctor.

For many, the decision would have been obvious. Hatem's two American colleagues returned home.

He chose the opposite path.

In 1936, Hatem left Shanghai for Yan'an with American journalist Edgar Snow, convinced he was going not where life would be easiest, but where a doctor was needed most.

Amid cave hospitals, wounded soldiers and villages without doctors, George Hatem stopped searching for a career and found a purpose.

As the Red Army's first Western-trained physician, he treated battlefield injuries, typhus, dysentery and malnutrition while helping build medical services under extraordinarily difficult conditions. For Hatem, the greatest challenge was not the lack of equipment, but the scale of human suffering.

"There wasn't even a doctor," his son, Zhou Youma, would recall in an interview with the Global Times. "If they captured medical supplies, no one knew how to use them. My father said, 'I'm not leaving. I'm joining your Red Army.'"

George Hatem and Agnes Smedley "Snow" receive a warm welcome from soldiers and civilians upon arriving in Bao'an, northern Shaanxi, 1937.

Becoming Ma Haide

Born Shafiq to a Lebanese family and later known as George after growing up in the United States, he was about to embrace a third name. To make his foreign name easier for Chinese comrades to pronounce, he became Ma Haide.

It was more than a practical adaptation. It reflected a growing sense of belonging to the country he had chosen to serve.

Unlike many foreign supporters who passed through Yan'an, Ma Haide stayed. In 1937, he became the first foreign member of the Chinese Communist Party. According to family accounts, Mao Zedong waived the usual probationary period, telling colleagues that Ma Haide had already proven his commitment through his work rather than words.

Dr. Ma Haide (George Hatem) with Mao Zedong and senior Communist leaders in Yan'an, 1937.

Over the years, that trust deepened. Ma Haide would serve as Mao's personal physician while helping establish medical services for the Red Army, training healthcare workers and building the foundations of a modern military health system.

His commitment was formalized after the founding of the People's Republic of China. In 1950, Ma Haide became the first foreigner ever granted citizenship by the new Chinese state, an extraordinary recognition of both his service and the life he had chosen to build there.

For Ma Haide, however, the greatest reward was never a title, a party membership or a passport. He later described his time in Yan'an as "the happiest, most meaningful and most extraordinary years" of his life.

His cousin Joseph Rached, the custodian of the family's private letters and photographs in Hammana, offered a different perspective on one of the defining moments of Hatem's life. In his family's memory, he was first and foremost a doctor.

"Mao asked him, 'What do you know about communism?'" Rached told The Beiruter. "George replied that he had read Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. Mao told him, 'It doesn't matter to us whether you're a communist or not. What matters is that people are dying in the streets from disease and epidemics.'"

Rached recalled that Hatem's foreign background initially aroused suspicion. Some believed the American-born physician might be a spy. Letters to his family were left unsealed and monitored, while investigations were carried out into his relatives in the United States. Only after years of service did those suspicions disappear.

"Eventually they trusted him completely," Rached said. "His family in America even faced protests because of his association with Communist China, while supporters in China protected his home."

A legacy beyond borders

The decades that followed transformed Ma Haide from a revolutionary physician into one of the architects of modern China's public health system. As a senior adviser to the Ministry of Public Health, he led nationwide campaigns against leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases while contributing to efforts against cholera, plague, trachoma and other infectious diseases. He also helped establish China's Dermatology and Venereology Research Institute, trained generations of healthcare workers and expanded healthcare to some of the country's most remote communities.

His achievements earned international recognition. Governments, universities and medical organizations honored his humanitarian contributions with distinctions including the Albert Lasker Public Service Award in the United States, the Damien-Dutton Award from Belgium, the Gandhi International Leprosy Award from India, and Lebanon's National Order of the Cedar at the rank of Commander, presented by President Amine Gemayel in 1988. He also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Distinguished Service Award from the University of North Carolina.

Throughout his career, Ma Haide visited more than 23 countries at the invitation of governments and international organizations, meeting world leaders including Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Edward Heath and Indira Gandhi, and serving as an unofficial ambassador for China's public health achievements.

Lebanese Ambassador to China Frida Sahama presents Ma Haide (George Hatem) with Lebanon's National Order of the Cedar, Commander rank, on behalf of President Amine Gemayel in Beijing on March 14, 1986.

Home never left him

In 1962, after decades apart, Hatem reunited with his father in Damascus. At a time when Lebanon and China had no diplomatic relations, Syria became the closest place where father and son could finally meet again after years of separation.

12 years later, in 1974, Hatem returned to Lebanon at the invitation of then-MP Amine Gemayel. During his visit, he reunited with relatives, toured institutions including AUB and Rizk Hospital alongside Lebanese physicians, and reflected on how much the country had changed since he had left as a young man.

Dr. Ma Haide with Amin Gemayel during a visit to Lebanon in 1974.

His connection to Lebanon did not end with those visits. Decades after his death, it continues to bring China back to the mountain village where his family's story began.

"I was working when two young women approached me speaking English," Rached said. " 'Is your mother Mary Hatem? Is this Dr. Hatem's family home?' I said yes. Then they told me, 'The Chinese ambassador wants to meet you.'"

According to Rached, that visit marked the beginning of a tradition that continues today. Every Chinese ambassador appointed to Lebanon has visited the Hatem family in Hammana to pay tribute to Ma Haide.

A Chinese Embassy delegation, the president and members of Hammana Municipality, and relatives of the Hatem family gather beside the bronze statue of Ma Haide in Hammana.

The Chinese Embassy later erected a bronze statue honoring Hatem in the village where his family's story began, a lasting symbol of the bond between China and Hammana.

That connection endured in both directions. From Beijing, Hatem followed events in Lebanon closely. During the civil war, after Joseph Rached wrote describing the situation in Hammana, Hatem replied with a simple but heartfelt message:

"Take care of yourself. Be careful in your movements."

 A letter George Hatem (Ma Haide) sent from Beijing to his relatives in Hammana on Oct. 31, 1983.

His final days

In the late 1980s, Ma Haide was diagnosed with cancer but remained active in public health. He died in Beijing on Oct. 3, 1988, at the age of 78, leaving behind one of the country's most enduring medical legacies. He was laid to rest in Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, an honor reserved for those who made exceptional contributions to the People's Republic of China.

Yet his final wish lay elsewhere.

"When I die," his son, Zhou Youma, recalled him saying, "scatter some of my ashes into the Yanhe River."

Ma Haide receives the honorary title "Vanguard in New China's Medical Cause" from China's Ministry of Public Health in Beijing on Sept. 23, 1988, just days before his death.